


you are the ghost town, and i am the heartland

by apotheotic



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Coming of Age, Growing Up, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, also there are some oblique mentions of wet dreams, and pining, dubious underage content?, idk - Freeform, it's really pretty gen though, lots of pining, so if that makes you uncomfortable then this fic probably isn't for you, that kinda stuff y'know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apotheotic/pseuds/apotheotic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the end of winter is coming, and Jamie isn't ready to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are the ghost town, and i am the heartland

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for an anon on tumblr. anon, if you're out there, i hope you see this! :') the title is from dar williams' "traveling again (traveling I)", which has absolutely nothing to do with the fic.

You’re getting way too big for Jack to carry you around like this, and the chill radiating off of his body is cold and uncomfortable (you can feel it even through your pajama shirt, sweater and thick winter coat), but the weatherman predicted earlier this week that today was going to be the last snowfall of the year, so you cling tighter to the frost-coated blue hoodie under your hands instead, legs wrapped stubbornly around Jack’s waist. “Easy there, kiddo,” he chuckles, voice low in a way that suggests he thinks you might be falling asleep on him. The hand that isn’t supporting you under your bottom ghosts over your hair. He’s always so restrained about touching you, because of the way your teeth start to chatter whenever contact lingers too long, no matter how much you insist you can handle it, really, you can! He takes being a Guardian very, very seriously. Especially when it comes to you. 

The North Wind carries the two of you to your windowsill, where Jack maneuvers inside a little bit awkwardly, careful not to smack your head on the frame of the window or his staff as he juggles it and you with an expertise born out of several years of this wintertime ritual. Numbness is beginning to nip at the tips of your fingers, and you know you should climb down and get dressed back down for bed on your own, but if you don’t you know Jack will do it for you, and that’s more minutes you have with him, more of his gentle touches. It suddenly seems very important to make the most of it, and you press your face into the cool hollow of his neck, feeling like a petulant little kid about to throw a tantrum.

“Did you have fun tonight?” Jack asks, hefting you easily with an unnatural strength for his slim frame and laying you down on top of the covers of your bed. It takes him a minute to peel your hands free from around his neck, and not because they’re frozen stiff. But he ignores it diplomatically: “That ice slide I made out of the fire escape was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself!”

Despite the pouty mood you always get into toward the end of winter, you giggle and say “Yeah! Super cool,” reaching up to high five him. The crooked slant of his smile spreads a little wider, and the two of you share a goofy grin (goofier on your end – you’ve still got a tooth waiting to grow in, the last one, twin of the left front tooth he knocked out the first time you met). His hands deftly undo all the buttons on your coat, leaving behind the ghost of a chill right up your middle. Frost tickles at the bare underside of your stomach as he lifts your sweater over your head, too, and hangs both items up on the coat hooks on the back of your door. Finally, he kneels down in front of you and plucks out the knots in your shoelaces, slides your shoes off and sets them aside. 

This is the moment you’ve been dreading: Jack shoves his hands in his pockets awkwardly, looks more at your sock-covered feet than at you. Both of you know he has to go, and even though part of you wants to ask him to stay with you until you have to wake up and go to school, you also want to impress him with how grown-up you’ve gotten. So instead you force a smile that feels like it stretches your cheeks the wrong way, shuffle back and slide under the covers all on your own. You don’t tell him how scared you are that when your tooth grows in, you officially won’t be a kid anymore and then you won’t be able to see him. You don’t tell him that you wish you would never grow up, so you could go out and play in the snow with him every night forever. You don’t tell him you’re scared that believing won’t be enough. A couple of nights ago you had a weird dream about him that made you feel really strange, good and bad at the same time and kind of scary, and when you told your mom she said it was something that happens when you grow up. You don’t tell him that, either.

You don’t tell him that you think maybe you like him the way you’re supposed to like girls.

Instead you put on your bravest face as Jack pulls the covers up to your chin, because if you were brave for him once and could be his Guardian then, you can do it again. “So I guess you have to go, huh?”

Jack ducks his head with a nod, and his smile that’s usually so cocksure looks sad and you feel awful because you’re trying but you can’t seem to keep him safe from feeling like that the way he always does for you. “Yeah. North Wind’s calling, kid. They’re expecting the first frost down in Australia any day now.” You give him a little nod, because you sort of understand. You can’t stay out to play with him when your mom makes you come in, and just like you, he has stuff to do, stuff that’s way more important than homework and cleaning your room. 

He leans down and brushes the hair back from your forehead, his thumb skimming over your brow so lightly you can barely feel the gooseflesh rise under it. “See you next year, Jamie,” he tells you, and his sideways grin looks so unbearably sad, like maybe he’s thinking all the same things about you growing up and forgetting him and never seeing each other anymore, that you can’t help the whim that makes you surge up and kiss his cheek, hard. His hands go around your back, hugging you close to him and you think you feel a little tremor that could be a sob go through him and you don’t think you can handle it at all if he cries because Jack Frost is the coolest guy you’ve ever known, cooler than your dad and every action hero in every movie you’ve ever seen  _including_  G.I. Joe all rolled into one, and if he cries then you know that things are really, really bad. 

But he doesn’t, he just pulls back and gives you a real grin this time, tussles your hair leaving snow crystals behind in it. And then you turn your face up just far enough to mash your lips against his, getting more of his chin than anything, and it’s a couple moments before he pulls away, long enough that you start to feel the burn of ice dancing across your bottom lip. “Night, Jamie,” he says quietly. You feel the reassuring, cool weight of his hand on your hip through the comforter, and then he’s gone. 

You lie there awake in the dark for the longest time, until the sensation of cold biting at your lips fades to just the memory of a touch, and something hollows out deep inside you at the thought of the seven months until he’ll come back. You wonder if this is what it means to grow up.


End file.
